For the first time in its history, America, broadly speaking, is consciously ashamed. However divided we may be upon preparedness, neutrality in thought has not brought peace of mind. We find ourselves making explanations and apologies. In the midst of unprecedented prosperity, we are restless and dissatisfied. Smoldering in the hearts of men is desire for change, fermenting in their minds is a demand for national leadership. The situation defies accurate analysis. It is not that we want war or that we favor militarism. Rather it is that our powers are dormant, our aspirations unexpressed, our beliefs unformulated, our attitude misrepresented, our motives misunderstood, and our presence in the world’s conflict unnoted.

We sit supinely under insult, injury, and violation of rights and laws, expressing such resentment and reaction as we have by sending relief funds and relief ships abroad, by making loans and munitions, by newspaper editorials, and by public speeches. We give vent to our feelings in a campaign for preparedness that urges Congress to pass a few feeble, disconnected defense bills, that organizes numerous defense organizations that are frantically busy collecting members and fees and holding meetings. We urge taking what we can get rather than insisting upon what we need. The result is, a large part of our energy goes into talk, which is not helping us greatly to really focus as a nation in this great crisis in the world’s history.

What really hurts us most is the realization that we, who think of America as the most prosperous, energetic, efficient, inventive, and best organized nation in the world, have suddenly discovered that we are nationally the most unprepared for united service in any field—geographical, military, industrial, economic, social, or educational. In vision, independent thinking, and citizenship we are not more prepared. In fact we have hardly yet begun to think of these in terms of national service.

We are still stunned by the realization that we are not in a position to grapple intelligently, instantly, and decisively with situations in our own country. Trinidad and Mexico have driven this lesson home. Our national method of dealing with hyphenism and its activities indicates little comprehension of its real roots. We now know also that we are not in a position to participate disinterestedly and courageously in the international adjustments that will take place at the close of the war. We suspect that the “peace ship” illustrated American capacity. Its founder’s victory in the presidential primary exposes our capacity for caprice in a nation’s crisis. We talk about fighting humanity’s battles when we have done none of the things that qualify us for such championship. We but dimly realize that a united, not a divided, nation must enter the lists. We talk about upholding the President’s hands, but we now know that we did in truth elect a minority President in 1912, and it is no great task to promise to uphold him. It is lip service to which we have long been accustomed.

The war has revealed to us the biting truth that we have one body of people on the coast line realizing the need of protection and another in the interior feeling quite safe at this distance. We see a conglomeration of colonies and ghettos and immigrant sections in our large cities, and the country dotted with settlements quite as un-American as anything to be found abroad. We face the fact that America is not first in the hearts of every resident, that not every man works for America, and that not every man trusts her present or believes in her future. This is still the land of promise for the “bird of passage” who exploits us, and whom we pluck in return.

Thanks to the war, we have been freed from the delusion that we are a united nation marching steadily along an American highway of peace, prosperity, common ideals, beliefs, language, and purpose. Security and prosperity have blinded us to the fact that we do not all speak the same language nor follow the same flag. We have marveled at the revelation that our own native-born sons and daughters of foreign-born parents could justify the Lusitania and defend the invasion of Belgium, and we have let it go at that, not realizing what the acceptance of this portends for future America. America has neglected, even forgotten, its task of making Americans of the people that have come to its shores. Men may be workmen and voters and taxpayers and bosses, but the final question for this nation to answer is—are they loyal American citizens?

In our quest for nationalism, we stand aghast at the task before us. About one seventh of our population is foreign born, and about one third is of foreign-born or mixed parentage. It is no small assimilative task to preserve the best in the traditions, beliefs, standards, and points of view of these peoples for the strengthening of America, and to give them enough of America’s ideals to make them strong citizens of a democratic country. Mr. Carl Snyder is authority for the statement that one half of all the aliens that have come to America are still alive. Despite the volumes written on the subject, we do not yet know whether this is a good or bad thing for America. The test has not yet been applied. The war is giving us a breathing spell to find out and to define a policy which will insure Americanism. In the absence of any constructive policy or clear national purpose we can predict little for the future. This we do know, that every government but our own has a national purpose which it is carrying out in America with its own subjects—naturalized or alien—through its representatives and agents, its publications, institutions, and business interests. America alone in its own territory has a negative procedure and is without a policy. We are concerned chiefly with those we can keep out or send back. Once an alien is admitted there is no system of protection, distribution, and assimilation; no specific inducements to citizenship; no encouragement to acquire a home stake in America. Sectional and specific interests compete for what the immigrant has to offer; the parent government keeps an eye on the new arrival and helps him in distress. The Federal government alone remains silent and indifferent.

It is true we have the beginning of such a system in several departments. It is encouraging that the Bureau of Naturalization has changed its attitude and is now being of some service to aliens who have applied for citizenship. For the many years of its existence, prior to 1915, this Bureau had not in any way encouraged or urged educational assistance for the prospective citizen. There is in the Bureau of Education a Division of Immigrant Education which for the past two years has been carrying on important educational work among immigrants. The educational work of these bureaus does not receive adequate support or authority and has not so far been considered as an essential part of real preparedness. The vision and faith and effort of these officials is not part of any strong defined policy; it is not coördinated with the government’s larger activities and could be wiped out to-morrow by a single order. It is makeshift, not policy.

This country is alive to the inadequacy of its army and navy. It has a glimmering that even the strengthening of these may not entirely protect its interests. If we may judge from the record of Congress and the press reports of the activities of our citizens to date, there appears, however, to be but the smallest comprehension of the slack that must be taken up throughout this nation; of the discipline, self-sacrifice, and spirit of service that each one of us must acquire; and of the need of organization along national lines that American institutions will require to be prepared to even maintain peace.

After many months of the European war, official America still finds its chief slogan to be “Safety first” and “Made in America.” Toward nationalizing its transportation lines, toward bringing all ports under Federal control, toward national citizenship training, toward educational unification and industrial preparedness the nation has made little progress. We are still dealing with ships and guns and ammunition, taking little thought of the questions of unity which will make a nation effective behind these defenses. We still quibble over whether we are for universal training or uniform service. We cannot federalize the militia or abandon useless army posts because it will offend some sectional interest that controls votes in the next election. This narrow conception of preparedness is the despair of thinking America. It is the doom of national unity.

In considering the hyphenated American, it is not so much that we question his ultimate loyalty. It is that we question his understanding and ability to act in an intelligent, organized way on behalf of America. It is that we do not know what influences may control his action though his heart and interest may be with America. The question for America to answer is whether we can create a united nation in both spirit and efficiency in the short time remaining before we have to deal with new questions arising after the war. We face the humiliating truth that for any immediate conflict this cannot be done, that we must take the risk and, if need be, weld our many peoples together on the firing line. Will the American desert his forum for the training camp; and the platform for inconspicuous field action? Will he erase his name from committees and memorials and petitions and throw away the press notices with his name in them for the toil and sweat of industrial mobilizing? Will the American woman stop making bandages and joining organizations and put the immigrant family on her calling list and send the illiterate adult to school and help to make English the common language of America? Can the Federal administration abandon its involved correspondence and political fences long enough to consider what the real preparedness of any nation comprises? A body of the best railway men in the country was asked some months ago to assist the government in railway preparedness and is still awaiting instructions. The Naval Consulting Board, representing the best brains in the country yet called together for industrial preparedness, pays its own bills, largely because of our national lack of vision and the “Pork barrel” methods of Congress.

In the growing demand for a more united America it is apparent that America needs a national spirit which shall combine reverence and service; a national consciousness which shall be willing to give as well as to receive benefits and to put something into politics as well as take something out; an ideal, which shall make every resident give something of his interest, service, time, and money voluntarily to America without waiting for conscription and without quibbling over “rights,” “emergencies,” “time of need,” or “obligations of business.”

The practical questions before America are how to become Americanized and how to stay Americanized. The answer to the first question comprehends all measures of preparedness adapted to our present needs. The answer to the second question comprehends America’s policy after the war.

In the measure in which we answer the first question so shall we answer the second. Let no one suppose that anything short of a national policy, purpose, and consciousness in which each one of us does his full share, will meet the critical need of the hour. We are agreed in the hope that America shall endure as a great nation; that we wish to preserve our free institutions and constitutional guarantees. We are also generally agreed that America shall rank in the world as a nation of vision, courage, ideals, opportunity, and achievement; and that, last of all, out of this democracy we hope to get the greatest amount of aspiration, happiness, and achievement per man that it is possible for a strong nation to have.

These are not to be achieved by inaction or by misdirected action. We are at the point where every act counts for or against the future of America. I believe our capacity for nationalism is in exact proportion to the measures we take for its achievement. The war has taught us that it cannot be left to the complacency of the native American or to the voluntary efforts of the immigrant. A general melting pot tended by no one in particular does not necessarily brew a nation. This is even more true when we find so many other self-interested nations and people stirring this pot. The war has also taught us that the demand for cheap labor cannot continue to be the chief determining factor in the admission of immigrants—because of America’s new interest in aliens as prospective citizens.

We not only have a present nation-size job of assimilation, but we need to prepare ourselves for the problems that will accompany negotiations for peace. We shall have at least three questions of great and far-reaching importance—incoming immigration, outgoing emigration, and citizenship status in America and abroad.

If the pending immigration bill represents the sum total of the wisdom we can summon on the first subject, we shall fail miserably to improve this opportunity by substituting a constructive policy for our prevailing negative policy. Such arbitrary tests as the literacy clause based on race and class theories and antagonisms bear no real or lasting relation to the fundamental national needs of the country. This country needs a statesmanlike policy in its international relations based not upon theoretical makeshifts, but upon a knowledge of existing conditions, upon capacity for assimilating the immigrant, and upon our power to develop the machinery which will make assimilation possible.

Admission of aliens to this country should be based upon their capacity for Americanization. Any exclusion laws should look to the raising of the physical standard, owing to the results of the privations and hardships of war, with greater emphasis on deportation for crime. I believe that every incoming immigrant should declare upon arrival his or her intention to remain here and become a citizen. Every immigrant should be required to become literate in the English language (the minimum standard to be definitely set) within five years after arrival, provided facilities are offered him. Deportation should be the penalty for failure to do so. With the probable increase in the immigration of women and children, every safeguard should be thrown about their admission, arrival, and distribution.

A policy of distribution should be worked out. This again requires three fundamental lines of activity—agricultural organization which will enable the land to compete with industry for the laborer and settler; the development of a rural credit system which will enable people to go to the land; and a national system of government employment agencies and the regulation of all private agencies doing an interstate business. All of the civic and stimulated “back to the land” schemes are doomed to failure until these three questions are solved. Industry will get the great mass of the immigrants as long as it offers higher wages, steadier employment, decent conditions and opportunities for advancement; and so long as, unlike agriculture, it has the organization to reach the aliens on or before arrival.

A policy of national education is required for a statesmanlike consideration of nationalism. Local communities cannot carry the burden of educating large numbers of incoming residents concerning whom they have not been forewarned and who have not grown up in an American community. The relation of education to seasonal labor is important. The great forces in Americanization are the home, the school, and the neighborhood. These cannot influence the itinerant resident, in one town to-day and gone to-morrow; in a factory this month and in a wheat field next month; in a city with its rule of civilization one year, and in a labor camp with only the most primitive rule another year; in a well-ordered home one week and in a derailed freight car the next. We must contrive that educational and cultural forces shall follow the man from place to place if we are to achieve nationalism through assimilation.

America has never had any method of protecting newly arrived aliens. This has been left to states, cities, philanthropies, racial societies, or to foreign governments. The alien is not only an international figure until he becomes a citizen, with all of the entanglements of dual citizenship and obligations abroad, but he is an inter-state and inter-city figure. Our industrial system and living conditions make him so. The average immigrant travels more in the few months after arrival in America than during his whole lifetime abroad. In the face of this, two cities and three states have recognized his disability and handicaps and have tried specifically to protect him. When the Federal government substituted Ellis Island for Castle Garden, all the safeguards that were thrown about the immigrant by law in the early fifties were abolished because there was no longer anybody to enforce them. We shall never attain a united America so long as we permit the first educational and social contacts of the immigrant to be controlled by his self-interested countrymen, and our equally self-interested Americans, and the exploiter, acting independently, or as the tool of both.

I am unable to find in government or in industrial organization, or in a combination of the two, any such marshaling of facts, any such attention to vital details, any such breadth of view as to make one sanguine of results. The industrial inventory now being made by the Committee on Industrial Preparedness of the Naval Consulting Board is indeed an indication of the possibilities. It is too early to say whether the government will use it or bury the results along with other naval reports.

This is the kind of service in which all good Americans can join, for the guns have been taken out of industrial preparedness. It is not the kind of task prosperous Americans looking for appreciation will like. It is singularly devoid of the pleasures of the footlight and applause; it cannot be done by a committee meeting or sending a check; it is not to be accomplished by “interest” or spasmodic work. It means a full day’s work in the regular task at which each man earns a living, to which is added the overhead charge of Americanism and nationalism. I am convinced that no other service or method will make America again unashamed.

We may fairly conclude that the real matter with America is that as a nation it has not achieved within itself a permanent national consciousness. It has no clear conception of its national power or its responsibility, having conformed too largely to the wishes of local governments and their representatives. The Congressman still represents, not America, but his district. This is illustrated by the retention of useless army posts and state militia doing police duty. The prevailing conditions in our political world have failed to make the Federal government master of its own resources and forces and the director of its own destinies. We are still propagandists occupying the field of debate on matters of preparedness. We are relying on the presidential campaign—the heat of battle, as usual—to tell us where “we are at,” after nearly two years of world conflict.

America’s selfish preoccupation, its own growth and prosperity, have commercialized national sensibility. Our war-order prices show this. Citizenship has come to be the cheapest of its privileges and the football of politics. The country has been living unto itself while taking into its heart the outpouring of other nations. The American dollar has been the goal of success, and “Safety first” the national motto.

Whether, in the absence of a great dramatic crisis, we shall attain that heroic spirit by which a nation is finally welded together remains to be seen. America needs nationalized vision and action. America needs universal service from each and every citizen. America needs to get together, to study itself, to have records of its needs and action, to organize, to plan, to standardize its efforts. America needs national incentives and national rewards outside of politics. America needs leaders who see its future in terms of international duties, Americanism, and efficiency—a synonym for preparedness.

Will America achieve these things? I believe the next few years will indicate whether America shall endure as a great nation or become a colony of states and sectional interests. The responsibility rests squarely upon the shoulders of each and every one of us. We cannot delegate it to Congress or legislatures, to benevolence or charity, to managers or superintendents, to the “man who has time” or to the agitator. The call is to national service for every one of us, and the only answer should be, where can we serve best and how soon shall we begin?